


invisible string

by neonheartbeat



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Batuu, Come Eating, Consensual Non-Consent, Crying, Doggy Style, Dom/sub Undertones, Dry Humping, F/M, Face Slapping, Fighting, Force Bond (Star Wars), Hand Jobs, Hate Sex, Inappropriate Use of the Force, No Pregnancy, Oral Sex, Rough Sex, Semi-Public Sex, Vaginal Fingering, Vaginal Sex, Wall Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-26
Updated: 2020-07-26
Packaged: 2021-03-06 03:14:51
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 16,074
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25526536
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/neonheartbeat/pseuds/neonheartbeat
Summary: A beacon for drifters, forgotten and lost: the spires summon all who are broken and tossed.----Rey and Kylo Ren are still connected after the events of Crait, and during their brief stay on Batuu in the Outer Rim, the tensions between the adversaries roil over into something... more potent.
Relationships: Finn & Rey & Rose Tico, Kylo Ren/Rey, Leia Organa & Rey, Rey/Ben Solo | Kylo Ren
Comments: 59
Kudos: 225





	invisible string

**Author's Note:**

> Listen, I needed an excuse to write some goddamn good old fashioned hatefucking, and then Taylor Swift dropped that new album and uhhh look I have no excuses all right just enjoy it if it's your thing and if not don't whoops
> 
> Tagged for consensual noncon because both parties DO CONSENT, but the emotions are very complex and sometimes people like to playact a little. Nobody ever crosses a real boundary in the narrative. The Force is so helpful like that.

“So _this_ is Batuu.” The words were defeated, half-interested as they came from Poe Dameron, who was leaning through the cockpit of the Falcon to get a better view at the landscape unfolding below. Rey watched from the pilot’s seat with interest. She’d never seen a planet like this one: mountains, enormous spires of stone standing straight up from the surface, greenery, trees, water all in one. _So different from Crait._

“Pretty, isn’t it?” Leia was leaning on her cane, a wry little smile on her face as they descended through the atmosphere. “And remote, which is even better. The Order won’t have a presence out here.”

_Good,_ Rey thought, trying to banish the memory of Kylo Ren’s face from her mind’s eye. Salt-white as Crait’s surface, looking up at her with a desperate, beseeching expression, eyes red-rimmed from pushing himself to the brink of exhaustion— exhaustion she’d been able to feel as it had bled over to her through their link in the Force before she’d cut him off, turning away. She didn’t want to think about that, though— Leia was giving her a perceptive look as if she could sense her inner turmoil, so she turned her attention to the viewport. “We could put down somewhere remote. I see a settlement there by that big black rock. Looks civilized enough.”

“That would be the Black Spire outpost,” said Leia, nodding. “The largest settlement on the planet— there are a few farming communities near the river valley about an hour away by transport. We can keep a low profile for some time— as long as it takes us to recover.”

Right, Rose. Rey reached out with the Force and sensed the girl sleeping in the medbay: she was all right, vital signs strong, but Finn’s worry was strong and sharp. “We’ll find some medical supplies,” she said, bringing in the Falcon to land gently in a small clearing of trees several kilometers from the outpost. “We’ll need them anyway, just in case.”

“She’s right. The Order has spies everywhere.” Poe ran a hand through his dusty hair. “Hope there’s a river nearby.”

“We have a sonic fresher,” Rey pointed out.

“I know. But nothing beats a real bath in water,” he said, grinning as he left. Rey frowned: what on earth kind of person bathed in water? A sand-bath was good enough for anyone.

“I’ll do a perimeter check,” she said, taking her staff up as she nodded at Leia. “Just to be sure.”

“Go on, then,” said Leia, turning to head back down the corridor.

* * *

Batuu was hot and humid, even in the shadow of the smaller trees, and Rey tied her hair back up into its old three bun style to get some of the dank heat off her neck. Small insects buzzed around her head as she marched through the underbrush, looking for any sign of First Order interference, but she found none, not even going further into the forest.

Well, that was a good sign, she guessed. With a sigh, she wiped her forehead and took a moment to drink from her canteen: the water was clear and fresh, but not very cold. She should find that river and—

It was always so odd when the Force did that _thing_. The sounds shifted, the buzz and hum and rustle of the forest becoming instead the metallic-hum, silent, of the interior of some vast ship: a cold breeze of recycled, dry air gusted over her body, a chill went up her spine, and she turned to see—

“Rey.”

Kylo looked terrible: haunted, driven down, half-beaten—although his face had remained more or less the same. Long. Crooked. Sullen. She stood and stared at him, unable to move, unable to cut it off. 

“What do you want?” she snapped.

Both eyes flickered across her. “You changed your hair.” It was just an observation, but her defense went up anyway: how dare he think he had the right to comment about her appearance?

“Yes. It was getting in the way. Haven’t you got your helmet back yet?”

“I destroyed it,” he said simply, and leaned forward almost imperceptibly, eyes narrowed. “You will tell me where you and the Resistance are.”

Rey almost laughed. “In the Go Kriff Yourself system.”

A dark cloud seemed to settle over his face. “Tell me _now._ ” The Force was pushing at her, but she could resist it easily: did he think this was going to work? 

“No,” she snapped. “You’ll have to work harder than that if you want anything out of me.”

In the blink of an eye, he had jerked himself to his feet, storming across to her. Rey remembered too late that they had been able to touch once, and backed up until she hit a tree, staring up at him— but he didn’t touch her, just loomed there, his hand clenched into a black-gloved fist as he stared into her face, nothing but hatred and fury written there. “I’m going to destroy _you,_ and the Resistance, and all of it. _All of it,_ ” he spat. “You’ll regret not joining me when I asked.”

“Then I guess you’d better start looking for us,” Rey said, glaring right back into his face. “Because we’re going to be everywhere. And you’ll never destroy us. Not if you tried for a hundred years.”

Kylo’s face twisted in fury, and he stepped forward— into nothing. He was gone, and the familiar sounds of the jungle filled Rey’s ears as she gasped for air after whatever _that_ had been, sweat prickling down her neck. 

_He’s not going to find us._ She was certain of it: there was no way. Batuu, according to Leia, was nothing more than a footnote in history, and after the hyperspace lanes had been worked out, there’d been no reason for anyone to even learn about it unless they were in some galactic history class. _He won’t. The Order won’t. We’re safe._

* * *

A week went by, and Rey was starting to relax again. She’d made a few incognito trips into Black Spire to get necessities like food, and was starting to enjoy herself. She’d even taken a dip or two in the river, where it was shallowest— only knee-high— at Poe’s urging. Rose was recovering well, Finn was back to his old happy self, and both he and Poe had declared they’d teach Rey how to swim.

She had stripped down to her basics and was standing knee-high in the shallows, splashing herself tentatively with cold water, when the Force hummed, alerting her a second too late as she whirled around and saw Kylo standing on the shore, not two meters away, staring at her. 

“I’d really rather you _not—_ ” she began, consternation flooding her body.

“It’s not like I can control when it happens,” he told her. “Are you trying to… swim?”

“I don’t know how, so no. I was— I was just splashing,” Rey said, crossing her arms and wishing she could sink down into the river. 

“Ah. Lake?”

He was testing her. Trying to wheedle out information. “Ocean,” she said, and took great pleasure in watching his face twitch in satisfaction. “Yeah, a huge great big ocean with purple water and giant rainbow-colored birds flying through the sky, with floating islands—”

Kylo’s face twisted back into sullen anger. “You know I _will_ keep track of when you lie to me. And when I find you, you’ll pay for every single one.”

“I don’t care,” she said coolly, and watched his eye twitch again. 

“That’s another one,” he told her, voice deceptively soft. 

She wiped sweat out of her face. Her feet were cold by now, but her shoulders and neck were baking in the sun. “Do tell. And what is it you plan on doing to me if you find me?”

Kylo marched down the slope in his uneven, jerky stride, barely giving her enough time to react before he reached out and gripped her right arm with his gloved hand. “I—” He cut himself short, looking down at her arm and the scar there as his mood changed from anger to confusion. “You’re— do you not have medkits?”

“As if you care,” she snapped, yanking her arm out of his grip. “Leave us alone. Leave _me_ alone.”

“The Force is connecting us. I’m not doing this. You know that.” He didn’t make a move to grab her again, and she almost wished he would: the gloves had been cold from recirculated air, and had felt almost… good on her warm skin. “I’m going to find you.”

He wanted to find her. That was… Rey didn’t know how to feel about it. Something valuable kept close, the knowledge she meant something to someone, even if it was being hunted as prey: she was even tempted for a single moment to tell him where they were if it only meant—

No. That was not safe, or wise: she would get someone killed. “No, you’re not.”

But he was leaning in, intent again. “You _want_ me to find you.”

Horror filled her. “I don’t—”

“Rey.”

“Don’t you dare use that against me,” she hissed, and for lack of any other weapon, scooped water up and flung it at him. It splattered across his face, dripping off the ends of his black hair as he stood there in the water, blinking at her. “Get out of my head!”

He was silent, the water dribbling off his face. “I didn’t mean to see your thoughts. The Force…” And she knew what he meant— even now, she could read his own emotions, dim and masked from years of practice guarding them, but his thoughts were clear: he wanted her at his side badly, by her own volition and not by force if possible—and something else, something darker and more desperate she could not understand that she barely touched before he slammed down a barrier, shielding it from her completely. _“Don’t,_ ” he snarled, suddenly on his guard again.

“I didn’t— what was that?”

He was practically vibrating with shame, rage, guilt. “It was nothing. _Nothing._ ”

“Ben—”

He was gone. The Force had severed their connection once again, and Rey found herself standing knee-deep in the river, one hand almost outstretched toward the place he had been standing.

* * *

It was two days before he appeared again. Rey was sitting in her own shelter (scavenged wings of an ancient craft turned on their sides against a tree, curtained off, the gaps stuffed with moss, a vent at the top to let warm air escape) and enjoying the feeling of simply being alone with enough food to be satiated by— a rare occurrence in her life up till now.

The Force murmured, and suddenly Kylo was sitting there on the floor across from her, and she froze mid-chew, staring at his face as he took in the sight of her with her mouth full of fried tip-yip and golden lichen. “Bad time, I assume,” he said tightly.

Rey swallowed furiously. “As if it’s ever a good time.” Then she took him in and noted he was out of his thickly padded surcoat, replaced by a loose black shirt that even on his broad frame seemed to swallow him up. “What are you wearing?”

He glanced down, then back up at her. “A… shirt,” he said.

“I can see it’s a shirt. I mean— forget it.” She threw an empty canteen at him, and it bounced off his chest. Kylo didn’t even flinch. The dark circles under his eyes were more pronounced, as if he hadn’t been sleeping, and the faintest shadow of stubble marked his lip and chin. “Why do you look like a happabore chewed you up and spit you out?”

“I’m _tired_ ,” he said flatly, and turned away from her, hunching his shoulders into the shadow of the corner. 

Rey blinked. She hadn’t thought to consider the fact that he was just as irritated with the Force’s constant push-and-pull as she was. Outside, the insects hummed in the trees. Moisture dripped from the leaves above in the quiet evening, and her shirt stuck to her body with sweat and humidity. “Oh,” she said, quiet as a wing sweeping through the air. Two of the three suns had set, and the last one was on its way down, sending golden beams shining through the cracks of her little shelter.

He turned back to look at her over his shoulder, and all she could make out was half his nose and eye in the light. “Tell me where you are,” he whispered.

Frustration coiled in the pit of her belly. “No. You’ll come here and kill all my friends and everyone I care about. And you can’t trick me again— you told me I was nothing, but they— the Resistance _values_ me—”

“They value you for your power,” Kylo said. 

“And you don’t?” demanded Rey.

The silence between them was long and heavy. “No,” he muttered. “I don’t.”

“You’re lying,” she hissed. How _dare_ he lie to her? She got to her feet, fists clenched. “I know you are. You told me on Starkiller that I needed a teacher, you didn’t _care_ about anything but my power.”

He was up off the floor fast as a whip, whirling on her. _“No_ ,” he said sharply, eyes haunted and grim. “No. That’s not true. You know that’s not true.”

“It _is_ true,” Rey insisted, hot tears welling up behind her eyes. “You let me think you could be turned. You let me— you let me think you were worth the effort all for what? So you could ask me to join you?”

“I didn’t— that’s not—” His chest was heaving, his expression completely inscrutable. “Not what I wanted to happen.”

“What did you think was going to happen?” Rey asked, trying to keep her voice down. Sure, she’d chosen a secluded spot for her shelter, but she didn’t want the whole Resistance charging in on this. “What did you want? What _do_ you want?”

“I thought…” His head shook once, sharply, like a hound trying to shake off a fly. “Nothing. It doesn’t matter.”

“Kylo—”

“I said it doesn’t matter,” he insisted, voice gone black as his surcoat. Both pale fists were clenched at his sides. “It’s over. It’s gone. Nothing— it’s pointless to consider any of it.”

“Fine,” she snapped. “Don’t expect me to think any differently, then.”

His eyes met hers, then, and they were so worn, so warm and brown and exhausted. “Rey,” he said, as if the name hurt him to say it. “Don’t.”

She became suddenly very aware that there was only a meter or so between them, where they stood. _He might kill me. Could he kill me?_

Kylo must have heard her thoughts, because he took a step back, eyes narrowed slightly. “No. I wouldn’t. Not like this. You’re not armed.”

“As if I couldn’t fight you hand-to-hand,” Rey told him. She wasn’t sure why his words brought a small amount of relief. Maybe he believed in playing fair after all.

His crooked, full mouth twitched up at one corner. “Mm. You could. But whether or not you’d win would be another question.”

Rey frowned. He was big, a head taller than her and twice as broad across the shoulders, built thick through the waist with heavy, solid muscle— she knew that, because she’d seen him before in only his trousers. At the memory, heat rushed her cheeks, and he seemed to hear her, because he looked away, at the ground, and she caught a dim memory of her own face, spluttering in mingled fury and flustered confusion, a red blush on her cheeks… but he was remembering her standing in his quarters, and she was remembering him standing on the rocks of Ahch-To. _Weird,_ she thought, a sentiment which was echoed by his own mind. “Anyway, whose fault is it that I’m not armed?”

The ghost of good humor on his face slid right off. “Your own,” he said. “You _gave_ me that saber.”

“It was an emergency! You would have _died_ if I hadn’t—”

Kylo’s eyes snapped directly to hers, suddenly alive, bright, glassy. “So. You _cared_.” 

“Of course I— I—” Why was her mouth opening and shutting like a fish? “Because I thought you were going to be—that light was still in you, and I was going to bring you home.”

His mouth twitched in either amusement or anger: she couldn’t tell which. “Ah. You did.”

Fury boiled over. “You _liar_ —” and she had closed the space between them, backing Kylo into the wall by gripping the front of his shirt. He had just enough time to let out a grunt of surprise before Rey slapped him hard across the face, leaving a red handprint on the pale skin there. “You think this is _funny?_ I should have _known_ there was nothing left inside you. _”_

Both dark eyes blinked at her, and his fingers came up to touch the mark on his face. “You do that again,” he said softly, “and we’ll see who’ll win in a hand-to-hand fight.”

She headbutted him in the nose. Or, at least, she tried to, but he sensed her intention before she did it, and twisted her around by the arm in a fluid movement, locking her against his chest with one steel-hard arm. “Let me _go,_ ” she gasped, struggling. As lean and strong as she was, she was no match for him on a sheer physical level, and both of them knew it. “Let me go, you—”

“Ah-ah,” he breathed, seizing her harder as she tried to kick him, bite him. “You said it yourself. There’s no light left in me. Not anymore. So why would I let you go?” Rey’s hands were curled around his sleeve. The fabric was smooth, slippery, a little crinkled— she didn’t know what it was, but it was hot between her fingers and his solid, broad arm. “You called me a monster once,” he whispered, very close into her ear. 

“You _are,_ ” she whispered, unmoving. Why was her heart pounding out such a heavy, rapid beat? Why was her mouth so dry? Why was her belly twisting around like she’d swallowed a snake? She hadn’t felt like this since— 

“Yes,” Kylo said, soft into the back of her ear, his nose almost touching her. “Yes, I am.”

_But... you held my hand and told me I wasn’t alone,_ Rey thought, plaintive and confused, and just like that he was gone again, leaving her trembling and wanting something she couldn’t understand, all alone in her shelter.

* * *

Kylo was back the next night. Rey hardly even paid attention to the Force’s whispers until the second pair of steps in the dusk following her along to her shelter back from the Falcon became too loud to ignore. “I suppose you think that little stunt you pulled scared me,” she said, refusing to look at him.

“I didn’t intend to frighten you. If I did—”

“You wrestled me into a hold and almost bit my bloody ear off!” Rey glared straight ahead into the forest as she walked. “How was I supposed to feel?”

“I…” His voice trailed off into nothing, and Rey took some pleasure in listening to his mind as he tried to work it all out. Nothing seemed to be forthcoming until he finally got some words out. Rey’s shelter was waiting just ahead, the glowlamps inside all lit and waiting for her. “I was… angry at you. At first. But when I was restraining you, I felt— I’ve only felt that once before.”

Rey finally did turn to look at him. “When you touched my hand,” she said, and the expression on his face told her she was right. “I felt that, too. It was like… being afraid, but excited at the same time. And… wanting. Something.” 

“Yes,” he said, eyes searching her face. He was back in his long robes, the same kind he’d worn the first time she’d seen him (but without the heavy cowl or hood, she noted) and above the high-throated leather seal that covered him almost to his ears, his face looked pale and worn. “Wanting.”

_He could touch me._ The thought made Rey shiver, and she didn’t know if it was disgust or anticipation. Kylo felt it, too: his nostrils flared like some large animal. “What do you want, then?” she managed to ask. 

She could almost hear his thoughts: _I want you to tell me where you are, I want to come to you, I want to find you, I want— I want— I want—_ The words themselves disappeared into a mass of heaving emotion, terror and disgust and loathing, fear, anger. “Your location,” he said simply, voice controlled and low.

“Besides that.”

A very small breath escaped his lips. “Nothing.”

That was hard to believe. “Nothing?”

One single muscle rippled in his jaw, under his eye. “Yes. Nothing. Tell me where you are. We have people working on finding the Resistance. We are close to discovering your location. If you don’t tell me, you will regret not being honest with me.”

“Oh, piss off,” Rey snapped, angry. “All you do is talk. You won’t hurt me. I don’t think you _can—_ ”

Without a word, Kylo lunged for her again, but this time she was expecting it, so she didn’t put up a struggle this time— she just let him manhandle her into her hut and pin her to the wall, his eyes dilated so widely that the black pupils had swallowed all the warm brown-green. “I _said_ ,” he snarled, lips tight and trembling, “you’d _regret_ it, and you will.” Both huge hands, encased in black leather, came up to grip her head, her face. Kylo’s fingers were trembling,and his breath was hot and frantic in her face as naked fury mingled with fear bled into her mind from his. “Because if someone else in the Order gets to you first, I— I won’t— it—”

_Oh._

Rey tried to find any words to say. “What, your troopers? I thought you were the Supreme Leader.”

“I am. They don’t answer to me, they answer to General Hux. And if _he_ finds you—” Kylo’s voice cut off into a sound she could not identify. “Rey. Please. Tell me.”

_He’s lying, he has to be._ “No,” she said defiantly. “Hux, you, everyone in the Order’s all the same.”

That cut him deep. Rey could feel it, and she could see it on his face: the shock and hurt that she would even consider him and Hux to be anywhere alike, which twisted into rage. “We are _not_ the same,” he snarled out between his teeth, grabbing her by the shoulders and bringing his face inches from hers. “Don’t—how could you _think_ that—”

Rey wasn’t physically stronger than him, but she was quicker. She shoved him back and ducked under one arm, and before he had the chance to react, she had both arms pinned behind his back and _he_ was the one slapped up against the tree trunk that made up a wall in her home. Of course, she couldn’t keep his arms behind him with her own arms’ strength, so she pressed her whole body to his back to pin him there— which meant his hands were in a very awkward position in a very awkward place on her body, but she didn’t care. “You _are_ the same,” she hissed into his ear from behind, “and you want us all dead, and I don’t trust you. I’d rather Hux find me first. I’d rather have him kill me outright than have _you_ get near me again, pretending you care about m—”

Kylo let out an animal snarl of rage, and his hands clenched. Probably instinct, but the way he was positioned meant his thick fingers brushed up, curling, and tightened hard across her groin, and—

_Oh._

Rey let out a sound she’d never made before, a sound low in her throat, twisting off high-pitched, desperate: that _touch_ had done something to her body, made her go weak in the knees and wanting, and Kylo’s head jerked around to the side, his anger gone as he stared at her in disbelief. “What—”

“Shut _up,_ ” she gasped, trembling, and pushed him harder against the tree. “Do it again. _Do it._ ”

Both of their breaths were coming like syrup on a cold day: slow, measured, careful. Gently, Kylo repeated the motions with his hands, and Rey muffled another cry into the thick black material of his robes as she spread her legs apart for better access. It felt… _good,_ and firm, and right. “Keep doing it,” she demanded, breathless as she gripped his arms just above the elbows. “Don’t stop ‘till I tell you to.”

Kylo was silent, but he obeyed. She experimented, rubbing herself further up and down, side to side, but nothing felt as good as leaning her weight on him and letting him rub his fingers against the top, the hard mound and the soft flesh below it. Pleasure rippled down her spine, out to her fingers and toes, to her head: glowing, golden, _nice_. The press of her forehead into his broad, warm back felt… good. She’d touched herself before, of course, when she’d been in the mood or found the time, but this was—this was— 

She found she was beginning to climb that ever-evasive peak: every wave of sensation became more and more intense, and her breath was coming in ragged gasps. “K-Kylo— it— oh, _oh_ —”

He remained silent as she went crashing over, his head turned away and into the tree trunk, but his fingers kept worked at her with punishing slowness until she groaned in protest, oversensitive even through her clothes, and lifted off him on wobbling knees, letting him go. 

Kylo finally turned to face her, and he— Rey blinked. He was blotched with crimson from forehead to chin, his eyes wet, and one hand hovered in front of his own groin, as if to shield whatever was there under the robes from her view. “I felt it,” he whispered, his mouth trembling. “Rey. I felt you.”

“I—” Rey suddenly felt ashamed, dirty. She couldn’t look at him. “I’m sorry—”

“I _felt_ it,” he repeated, sounding dazed. “All of it. Let me— will you let me do it again?”

“Again?” Rey couldn’t believe her ears. “Why?”

“I’ll show you,” Kylo said. “I’ll—I can make it better. I can make it good. Rey. Let me.”

_It’s another trick._ Rey backed away on unsteady feet. “No,” she whispered, humiliation and self-loathing bubbling up inside her— or were those Kylo’s emotions? “No! That was wrong, I shouldn’t have—”

He stepped forward, lips parted like he wanted to say something, but he was gone again, and Rey crumpled down to her sleeping mat and curled into a ball, trying to breathe, to think, to forget about everything that had happened.

* * *

“We seem to be making some headway with recruitment efforts,” said Finn cheerfully, pointing at the map he’d made from an old piece of flimsiplast. “Here in Black Spire, at least. People are interested. Vi says so, anyway.”

Rey smiled over at Vi Moradi, who returned the smile. She liked the woman, although she thought her bright orange jacket and blue-streaked hair were perhaps a bit counter-intuitive to spying— but Vi was the expert, not Rey. “Good,” she said. “And we’re still planning to get Leia offworld?”

“As soon as can be arranged,” said Leia. “Your intel was correct, Rey. It seems the Order is actively seeking us out. I’ll take a ship and start setting up a rendezvous point on Bakara. Dameron will stay here with you and Finn, and we’ll get the rest of us offworld to a main base on some other planet as soon as we have gotten enough recruits to help us.”

“Of course, General,” said Rey. “We can send our recruits to you when we get our hands on some transports.”

“And you make sure you’re not found,” said Leia, giving her a critical look. “We can’t afford to lose you.”

“Yes, General,” Rey said softly, and looked at Vi. “You said you think people are willing to join the cause?”

Vi nodded. “Yes! I’ve seen plenty of anti-Order sentiment. Most of the people in Black Spire, either staying or passing through, have heard all about the destruction of the Hosnian system. It’s really spread like wildfire, I think.”

“Perfect. And I think you said you’ve had dealings with the Order before?”

She grinned. “Yes, a while back. Don’t worry. I can handle myself if a scouting party comes to town.”

“Good to know.” Rey smiled back at the woman as they dispersed, and Leia caught her on the way to the makeshift landing platform where the transport was waiting. 

“I know I’m not my brother,” she said gently, in her soft, old voice like leather as they stood together in the sunlight. “But I know you need a teacher, Rey. If you want me to, I will do what I can in Luke’s place.”

They’d hardly talked of Luke since Crait. Rey felt tears threaten to choke her: guilt at leaving him behind, shame, loss. “Thank you,” she managed. “I don’t know if I’m… ready, but—”

“Whenever you are, I’ll be there,” Leia said reassuringly, and patted her on the hand. “May the Force be with you.”

Rey stood alone and watched the transport lift up and away, taking Leia with it, and turned back into the forest, thinking about Crait, and Luke, and salt, and Kylo.

She had left him there, demanding he help, and claiming she knew there was still light inside Kylo: how wrong she’d been. How _stupid_ and arrogant and naive. And the last thing she’d said to him was that Ben Solo was their only hope— when all along, it had been Luke, because Luke had diverted Kylo’s attention for long enough to get them all to safety before dying, and she— she’d tried so hard and only been able to save the handful of Resistance fighters that had survived. _I could have done more. I should have tried harder. I shouldn’t have been so—_

“It wasn’t your fault.”

The voice was low, measured, dark: almost toneless, but gentle regardless. Rey jerked her head up and glared through her tears at Kylo, who stood just to her right, watching her from a distance. “Oh, wasn’t it?” she snapped, scrubbing at her face with dirty hands. “When I left him there in the rain, so sure I could save _you_ that I just threw him away?”

“It was my fault,” said Kylo in that same low tone. “I killed him. Just as if I’d run him through with my saber. Like my father. He’s dead because of me.”

“As if you care,” Rey spat. “You’re probably happy you killed him. One less thing to worry about.” He didn’t react. She pressed further. “You won’t be satisfied until you’ve killed every one of us. Finn, Poe, your mother, me—”

“Stop,” he said softly, watching her. 

Ah, _there_ was something, and behind his mental block, a faint hint of… it must be violence, because the ideas and images in his mind couldn’t be anything else: cries, choking sounds, the manhandling of her body to his will. “You’d just love to run me through, wouldn’t you?” she hissed, advancing. “I can feel it. You want— you want to—”

— _Rey in her basics, skin gleaming wet, bending to meet the water—_

_—naked skin, an open mouth, bruises, red marks left by teeth and—_

What? That wasn’t violence. What was— 

Flummoxed, she paused in her tirade, but Kylo continued to meet her gaze even as his large nose turned pink. Rey became suddenly very aware that heat was pooling heavy and insistent in the bottom of her pelvis. She shuddered and crossed her arms over her chest instinctively, even though she had on thick layers: her shirt, her tunic, her long gray wraps. “I don’t want to kill you,” he said roughly. 

She couldn’t stop herself from thinking, and she’d never been good at masking her thoughts anyway, so he got a full view of her mind’s eye as she thought about Kylo’s bare chest, broad arms, thick waist: the way the scar she’d left curled around his nipple, the multiple scars all over his torso— how she’d thought, once, she’d like to touch his hair, his face—her memory of herself awkwardly using his pinned hands to get herself off while he just let her do it. “No—” she began, horrified, but Kylo looked away and mentally withdrew, giving her a semblance of privacy. 

“I can teach you how to block your thoughts from me,” he said. “If you want to, that is.”

“You don’t get to teach me _anything,_ ” she insisted, humiliated. 

Two eyes, amber in the dusk, met hers. “No? Not even…” and an image unbidden entered her mind: his hand, naked and pale and thick, sliding two broad fingers into—

Rey choked on her own saliva. “No!” she squeaked, voice half cut off by consternation. “I, I’d never let you _near_ that— I hate you—”

“Strange. I seem to remember I was very near _that_ the last time we spoke.”

Oh, she was going to _kill him._ “If I had my saber, I’d run you _through,_ ” she spluttered, and charged him, the pair of them crashing to the floor of the forest. Bracken caught in his hair as she sat on his belly, pinning him down where he lay, and Kylo gazed up at her, mouth agape. “You’re not— I’m not giving you _anything_ I don’t want to.”

“I’m not going to force you to do anything,” he said. 

“Fine,” Rey snarled, and bent forward, crushing her mouth to his in a furious… it couldn’t be a kiss, because kisses were soft and gentle: she’d seen kisses between Resistance members, and this was like trying to fight, to eat another person alive. His teeth scraped her lip, and she bit down on his mouth so hard she broke the skin, but he didn’t shove her off him— he only made a low, desperate noise in his throat and brought his big, gloved hands up to cup the back of her head. 

She pulled her head away and stared down at him, gasping for air. His split lip was bleeding. Rey put her finger in his mouth as if she was checking a happabore’s teeth and pulled down his lip, exposing pink-stained bottom teeth, crooked and white. _Monster, monster._ His hands were leaving her head, drifting down to land on his throat. “What are you doing?” she asked, shifting her seat. Something was poking her in the bottom, right near his belly, and it wasn’t very comfortable. 

“I’m hot,” he said, opening the throat of his surcoat. 

“I don’t care. Keep your clothes on.”

Annoyance flashed across his face like lightning. “Rey—”

“I said _no,_ ” she spat, and he stilled his hands, waiting as she slid further down to his thighs, over the thing that was prodding her. “Have you got your saber stowed in your trousers, or—”

“Rey—”

She undid his belt, pulled up his surcoat to reveal his heavy-duty trousers and the thick weight of something underneath the fabric. “No, that can’t be your saber. It’s not got the crossguard thingy—”

“ _Rey_ —”

Rey tugged his trousers open and stared in shock as Kylo just lay there, eyes shut tight as he breathed through his nose. “What in the name of R’iia’s _tits_ —”

“I assume you’ve never seen a penis before, since you’re—”

Indignation flavored the bond between them. “I _have,_ just not one— like _this,_ all big, and, and hard like this— and are those _veins_? And what’s that?” She pointed at where his prepuce was slipping back, exposing the flushed, damp glans, and panic spiked sharp from Kylo.

He jerked upright, his cock swinging ludicrously toward Rey. “Don’t _touch me_ —”

Rey raised her hands, still straddling his thighs. “I didn’t! I wasn’t going to!”

The breath sucked in between his teeth was like a hurricane. Kylo grabbed her by her arms and tugged her in, mashing his mouth to hers in a brutal, unforgiving kiss that made her neck ache and her lip sting, but she… found herself wanting more, _liking_ it, almost. Almost. “I’m going to make you come again,” he growled, and Rey nodded, ashamed of herself giving in, but wanting relief and wanting _him_ so badly that she couldn’t resist. 

He tugged her trousers down to her knees, under the thick tunic, and shoved his leather-gloved hand into her pants. Rey frowned as he adjusted his position: this didn’t feel the same at all. “I think—”

Kylo bit at her ear and she yelped as one thick finger sank _up_ and _in_ and buried itself in her, thrusting gently as he moved his wrist. “I said I’d make you come. I can feel what you feel. Can’t you feel _me_?”

And she could, strangely: like a phantom limb she’d never had before, the weight and fullness between her legs, the _wanting_ similar to her own. “Yes,” she whispered, and felt him sigh in response, then press his thumb to the very top, where it swelled and tingled and felt _good_ — but now it felt… different. She needed something else, something more inside her. “Can you—”

“Another one?” he asked, and slipped in his middle finger alongside the index, making Rey gasp and squirm in his lap. “Greedy little scavenger.”

“I hate you,” she panted, eyes squeezed shut as she began to rocket up toward her climax, his fingers an inexorable force as they stroked and then _curled_ inside her. “Y-you horrible, awful, stup _aaaauugghhuhhh_!”

She could feel him gripping his own cock at the base, sweating in concentration, demanding his own body not follow suit over the edge, and dimly wondered why as she came down from her climax, panting with her cheek against his shoulder. Why would anyone not want to feel something so good?

He didn’t answer her and only sat there, hands resting on her thighs tentatively until she raised her head and shuffled off him, avoiding eye contact. Leaf matter was still tangled in his hair, and his cock hung out of his trousers like a navigational pike. “When I find you,” he said, voice ragged and hoarse, “I’m going to have you. In every way I can. The Order won’t touch you. I promise you that.”

Rey shut her eyes, trying to fight her own feelings. “Swear,” she whispered, and when there was no answer, she opened her eyes to find that he had gone.

* * *

Kylo Ren, cape billowing, stalked down to the laboratory on the _Finalizer_ with a handful of dried bracken. “Analyze this,” he demanded, shoving it at a tech. “I want the result as fast as you can get it. That’s an order.”

“Yes, Supreme Leader,” said the tech, a woman in a gray jumpsuit with a nervous expression on her face. 

He turned back and walked out, not caring that he was taking up half the hallway. _Rey. Rey. Rey._ His cock still throbbed in his trousers, an aching, heavy reminder of what he’d staved off— he could still hear her confusion in his mind, wondering why he denied himself pleasure. _I want it inside her, I want to get inside her and fill her with me and make her mine—_

Kylo nearly came just thinking about it, untouched, and made for his quarters, where, once secluded behind closed doors, he went instantly to the fresher and stripped down, thumbing the panel to dump frigid water over his body, plastering his hair to his head and neck. His erection faded quickly, and he stayed in under the cold spray for a minute or two longer before stepping out and drying off. 

He glanced at himself in the mirror. Thick, broad chest, arms, legs, waist, pasty pale from rarely seeing sunlight: scars, moles and freckles; the dark thatch of hair between his thighs, the lean shins and feet. 

_Ugly. Broken. Worthless._

_Rey._

Rey was good— Rey had furious, beautiful hazel eyes and freckles and soft hair and skin kissed by years of the sun on Jakku, and lean muscles: a heart that felt compassion and a whole spirit. Rey would never want to touch this: not him, not this monster in layers of shadow.

_But… she thought about my body._

He wanted to break the mirror. Instead, he turned away, and got dressed. 

* * *

“Rey! Rey!”

She jerked out of her meditative pose to her feet. “Finn?”

His face was drawn, harried as he ran towards her. One dark finger pointed north. “Someone in town says they saw a TIE Echelon landing out beyond the Spire—”

_A transport._ Rey couldn’t breathe. She turned, searching the horizon, and looked back at Finn. There _was_ something out there. She could sense it. “I’ll go look. Stay here.”

“But—”

“Stay here! I’ll comm you if it’s an emergency.” With that, she took off running into the forest, panic burning bright and sharp in her chest. _Troopers? How many? Maybe an officer? Hux?_ For all her talk of Kylo and Hux being the same, she knew she’d rather deal with Kylo than Hux, especially after Poe’s description of the man. _Please don’t be twenty troopers. Please._

Rey made it into a clearing and caught sight of the transport: it had landed almost perfectly in the center of the space, and the ramp was already down. Troopers were marching out, four by four, and she watched in horror and fury as the last of them filed out, followed by a few officers, and last of all… 

No. _No._ It couldn’t be, but it was— Kylo, cowled and robed, but still without a mask. “Start questioning the people in the outpost,” he told the officers. “I want the place covered from top to bottom. Spare no one.”

Rey backed away until her bottom hit a tree. Rage curled in her throat. That _liar,_ he’d found them anyway and brought the whole kriffing Order with him. So much for all his words about how he wanted to make sure she wasn’t found first. _I’m going to strangle you with my bare hands,_ she thought, glaring at him from the undercover. 

Kylo… _heard_ her. Froze in step, head turned toward the Spire, one hand clenching tightly at his side— he didn’t move toward her or make a move at all, actually, but he’d heard her and she _knew_ he’d heard her. “Go!” he barked, and the troopers didn’t want to be told twice: they marched off quickly, headed up by their commanding officers in slate-gray and black. 

When the clearing was empty, Kylo turned to face where she was hiding. “I know you’re there,” he said. “Come out.”

_Fat chance._ Rey held her breath and masked her thoughts as well as she could. _I’m not here. I’m not here._

He tilted his head. “You should have taken me up on my offer to teach you how to mask your thoughts from being read. More useful than me teaching you how to... take my hand.” The double meaning was clear, even from a distance. His thoughts glimmered with faint humor.

_How dare he?_ Rey gulped down her anger and shame, and remained silent. He wouldn’t get her. He wouldn’t. She’d make for her shelter, and that way he wouldn’t find anything else.

“Ah, yes. Your shelter. I confess I’m curious to see it.” Kylo’s head swiveled from side to side, as if he was lazily searching for something of no importance.

So he was _still_ reading her thoughts. Rey let herself think about Finn for a moment, his wonderful kind smile and his strong hands, and took great satisfaction in watching Kylo’s face twist into a furious scowl. She went even further, wondering very loudly if Poe’s backside was as firm and smooth as his shoulders, and Kylo lost it: with a rush of the Force, Rey was pulled from her hiding spot and dragged across the leafy floor of the forest to his outstretched hand. He didn’t take her by the throat, though. The gloved fingers twisted themselves into her gray wraps, by her breasts, over the rough brown tunic. 

“Don’t _toy with me_ ,” he snarled, hot and furious. 

“Oh, don’t play the victim,” she spat right back, inches from his face. “You brought them here, you, you, you oversized lying bantha’s arse. So much for—”

“I didn’t _want to,_ ” he growled, and dragged her close to his chest again, twisting around to pull out a comlink. “Be quiet.”

“But—” Real fear spiked her blood at the sight of it. Who in the suns was he calling?

His free hand clapped over her mouth, and he thumbed the comm. “Supreme Leader. New orders. The 709th will stay put in Black Spire until I decide they’ve had enough time to question everyone. The first person I see approaching the Echelon without an order to do so will be killed on sight. Am I clear?”

_“Yes, Supreme Leader,”_ came the staticky, but clear answer through the comm.

Kylo tucked the comm away and turned Rey toward the transport. “Walk,” he demanded in a low tone that brooked no argument, and Rey stumbled forward, forcing her feet to march. 

“Where are you _taking me_ —”

He did not answer until they were inside and he’d closed the ramp, the lighting automatically flickering on and illuminating the inside of the TIE Echelon in a cool white glow. Rey took it all in: rigging along the walls and a few seats unfolded, grips hanging from the ceiling, a pair of benches facing each other lengthwise down the body of the hold, a port leading to the pilot and copilot’s seats, shown to be empty. “I told you,” he said coolly. “What did I tell you when I saw you last?” 

“That—” Rey flushed, infuriated at the memory of his boldness. “That you’d have me, and that you wouldn’t let the Order take me. But I don’t know why you’d bother bringing me into this shuttle if you—”

He advanced on her and silenced her with a hard kiss, and she brought her hands up on instinct to clutch at his robes: he tasted of metal, the ozone of deep space, and leather. “I’m not taking you in the dirt like an animal,” he snapped, coming away for a moment. “You should have—” and his lips pressed into a hard line, his eyes avoiding hers. 

“A shuttle?” she asked, staring at the interior. “I thought you needed a bed to—” Kylo gripped her by the arm and marched her over to the nearest bench, where he pushed her down until her elbows rested on the cold durasteel. “Oi!”

“Cold?” he asked, and shucked off his cowl, tucking it under her elbows. “There. You might slip.”

Rey’s belly twisted into knots of… she wasn’t sure. Excitement? Fear? Anger? She’d seen what he had in his trousers, and while part of her was sure that thing would never fit into her body like she knew things were supposed to fit, another part of her was very intrigued to see what might happen— and what it might feel like— if it _did_ fit. “You’ll have to catch me, then,” she said, slightly high-pitched as Kylo fumbled with something behind her. She heard a clink and scrape of cloth on skin, and before she could register that his trousers were down, she felt his warm, gloved hands dragging her tunic up, pulling down her trousers until her backside was exposed to the cold, recirculated air of the transport. _Do it,_ Rey thought, clenching her jaw. He might as well: she’d already shamed herself in front of him, made a ridiculous mess of herself at his hand. She had nothing else to lose. Maybe if he liked it enough, he really wouldn’t turn her over to—

_No._ That was Kylo, probing at her mind. _No. I said I wouldn’t let them touch you, and I won’t._

_Even if I tell you not to do this?_ she challenged, raising her head and staring at the wall.

Kylo’s hands stilled on her hips. He had not touched her anywhere else. _Yes. Even then. I’d dress you, turn you free and tell you to get as far away from Batuu as you could._

He was being truthful. Rey felt some emotion she could not understand swell in her chest as she spread her legs a little further for him. “Then do it,” she snapped, squeezing her eyes shut. It would hurt. Everyone said it hurt sometimes, but Rey was no stranger to pain. _“Do_ it, before I change my—”

Fingers circled her flesh, dipping in, stroking, firm and sure. Rey sucked in a small breath. That hadn’t been what she’d expected, and it wasn’t what she wanted: she was itching for a fight, not… not whatever this was. “I said—”

He sounded like an exasperated teacher. “Do you _want_ it to hurt? Wait.”

“But I—” His fingers circled the place at the top, and Rey let out an involuntary little squeak, then reddened from throat to ears at her traitor of a body. He would force her to make a soft little idiot of herself, squirming and begging and she _didn’t_ want to beg, she wanted to— well, she wanted _him_ to beg _her_. A mental image flooded her as Kylo’s hands stroked and pushed: Kylo on his back, in her lap, squirming and wailing as she made him do what he’d made her do—whining for release, unable to speak, lips bitten and red. 

She moaned. Heat rushed her from breast to thigh, and Kylo made an involuntary little sound as he pulled suddenly-slick fingers from her body. “You don’t want me like that,” he said roughly.

Indignation drew her face into a scowl. “I, I, how do _you_ know what I don’t want?”

“You _don’t_ ,” he warned, and she felt a broad, hot, blunt something pressing against her core, right where she knew it was supposed to go as one of his big hands gripped her belt and the other one braced himself against the bench. “You should have _joined me_ —”

Rey arched her back and _pushed,_ easing him into her. She bit her lip to keep from crying out. He was thick and hot and felt nothing like his fingers: every inch of him was pressing against every inch of her. Behind her head, Kylo let out a choked sound and pulled her back even further, breath coming in cut-off gasps as he sank himself deep and full and came to rest flush against her backside, then went still. Both of her eyes shut as she focused: the crisp hair between his thighs tickled her, the fingers on her body trembled like leaves, his breath came in short stints, and she could feel… an echo, a semblance of his own sensations. Curious, she probed into that, and came up against a flood of thought, words, all jumbled together— _velvet so soft smooth hot wet tight, tight, so good on me around me soft soft—_

“I’m _not_ soft,” she snapped, turning her head in a vain effort to find his face. “Are you going to move, or—”

He groaned, somewhere deep in his throat, and bent forward as his hips began to work at a punishingly firm pace. Rey gasped and bent her head between her shoulders, both her hands keeping her upright as he rutted into her with the _slap, slap_ of flesh on flesh and the gasps of their breath the only sounds. 

Well, that wasn’t true, quite: the only sounds heard with _ears,_ but through the Force, it was like a concert, an opera of sound and feeling and noise: _Rey, Rey, Rey, want her hate her want hate her— hate him, hate him, could kill him for making me feel like this, need, I need—_ regret, anger, shuddering pleasure, something _else_ tentative and just-growing and delicate between them both.

Kylo bent further, pressing his clothed torso to hers, and wrapped one arm around her front from behind, palming at her left breast beneath the thick tunic and wraps. His chin planted itself in the nape of her neck, beneath the last bun, as his mouth touched her shoulder. “This. Off,” he panted.

“No,” she croaked, fighting the urge to take it off anyway. A wave of displeasure crested into her mind from Kylo’s, and Rey pushed it right back at him. _I said no!_

He growled, low in his throat, and redoubled his strokes, ramming into her with bruising force as his hand gripped her breast over the tunic. _I can feel you. You like this._

_No,_ she protested, but bit down on the inside of her cheek when he changed angles, slamming against something sensitive and hidden inside her, making her squirm involuntarily. “Ah—” she gasped, and choked it down as she felt eagerness stoke to life inside Kylo’s mind. 

_Yes. Yes. Say it. Open your mouth, Rey. Let it out. Let me hear._

“No,” Rey whined, trying to muffle her mouth against the durasteel bench and his discarded cowl. She wouldn’t let him hear her. She _couldn’t,_ not again— and his hand left her breast and slipped down beneath her thighs, his weight borne on her back and his other arm as he stroked mercilessly at the spot between her legs she was beginning to resent the existence of. “Ohhh— ah, ah, _ahhhh_ Kylo Ky— oh, kark me, _kark,_ I—”

“Say it,” he rasped as his fingers moved more slowly, barely able to speak aloud. “Say it—”

Her mind wasn’t hers anymore. It had broken apart into desperate little shards of red-hot light, all bent on one purpose, one end. “More, _more, more, please, Kylo, more I need it need you—”_

Kylo shuddered and pressed back and forth, back and forth until she was coming undone, shrieking and babbling under his chest, and after that he found his own release, silent and stony as he had ever been, eyes shut, forehead pressed into her neck as he emptied himself into her body. Rey felt the throbbing, the hot sticky spend, the sting as he withdrew and stood on thick, trembling legs, tucking himself away and breathing deep and even through his nose without looking at her. Moving was not an option. Her foot had a cramp, and her breath was coming in gasps like she’d run two kilometers. Neither of them spoke for a moment.

I,” said Rey, rolling to her side on the bench, then propping herself up on one arm with her trousers around her knees, “am _not_ going back to base with moons-know-what dripping down my legs.”

“Ah,” he said, giving her a glance as his already-flushed cheeks turned redder. “No. I don’t suppose you want that. Sit up.”

Sitting was hard. Everything between her legs felt puffy and hot and swollen, tender and used. Rey winced as she spread her thighs, trying to avoid the mess from staining her trousers, and Kylo was there in an instant, kneeling down at her feet and tugging her boots off, one by one, then her trousers. “Oi! I need those—”

“You’ll get them back,” he said with maddening patience, and placed his gloved hands on her thighs, stroking his thumbs up her poor abused parts with more gentleness than she’d thought he was capable of. “Mm. Looks tender.”

“That’s because it _is,_ you bat-eared—” He pressed his mouth to her, and Rey yelped in shock: nobody had ever done this to her before— she hadn’t even considered this as a possibility, not even in her strangest dreams, and here was Kylo Ren, kneeling, black-cased hands curled around her thighs and his nose pressed into the top of her cunt where it felt the best, his hot tongue licking up his own mess, making it feel better, kissing her down there like it was her mouth. She couldn’t stop the words from spilling out, or the incoherent noises. “Oh, _oh oh oh,_ Ky-Kylo, n-no, it, it’s dirty and, and, you just— aaaahhhuughh, mmm, ‘s’not, not, _don’t,_ yes, just l-like tha, that, thaaaa’s f-fine good yeah _o-oh_ —”

When she came again, open-mouthed and shaking, he moaned, his nose buried in the glossy brown curls between her legs. Her thighs clamped tight around his ears, and one hand was buried in his hair. She didn’t realize his hands were cupping her backside from under her legs until she caught her breath for the second time and came back to herself, then looked down in time to see him pull away, his own come smeared across his lips and chin. Kylo wiped his mouth on the palm of his glove and licked it clean, never taking his eyes off hers, and she shivered as he sighed heavily.

“I was _trying_ to find you on my own,” he said quietly from his spot between her knees. “I had the biological matter stuck to me from the Force-bond analyzed in the laboratory. It said it was composed of multiple trees found in the Batuu system, specifically on Batuu, and the results were given to Hux as a safety measure that I couldn’t override. I had to come.”

That was not very comforting, but still… “You’ll not find us,” Rey said softly. “Or at least you’ll try not to—”

“I can’t promise anything,” he told her. “The 709th is bringing more troops to patrol the outpost and the surrounding settlements. If they stumble on the Resistance, I won’t be able to cover that up.”

She got to her feet, pulling her things back on. “We’ll hide better, then. We’ll stay out of their way.”

Dark eyes watched her. “And… you? Will you make an effort to stay out of my way?”

Rey avoided looking at him. “I… don’t know,” she said. A gust of cool air drifted down her neck from the vents. “But I’ll be in town. Sometimes. If you want to find me.”

He leaned forward, bringing himself to his feet in a lumbering movement. “My mother. Is she safe? Offworld?”

“She’s—” Rey bit her lip. _A trap?_ “She’s not on Batuu,” she said finally. 

Visible relief sagged Kylo’s broad shoulders. “Good.”

“You could come with me,” she said, throwing caution to the wind. “Please. Just come with me, back to base. Help us turn the tide of the war—”

It was like a mask had gone up over his features, turning them from flesh to granite, both eyes gone black and hard. “No. Those people— the Resistance are all fools. The Order will wipe them out. I’ve seen the capabilities on both sides— you don’t stand a chance.”

“But if you joined us, we _would_ —”

“I said _no,_ ” he snapped, and stormed to the ramp, slamming down the lever that opened it. “Get off my ship. _Go._ ”

She went without being told again, stumbling down the ramp on weak knees, then running when her feet hit even ground, crunching in the bracken. As the summer sun beat down on her neck, Rey did not look back.

* * *

“Have you heard about the Order?” whispered a woman to another in the market as Rey crept by, hidden under a scarf that draped over her hair and concealed her face. “They’re setting up a camp on the north side of town. Can you believe it? My cousin told me so.”

Rey made her way past them and into Oga Garra’s cantina, where the proprietress was busy pouring drinks for thirsty customers. It had been almost a week since she’d managed to help Vi ship a few recruits offworld, and with the new presence here, it was going to be more difficult. She slid up on the stool and passed the Blutopian a credit, and in return got a large Moogan tea. “Any news?” she whispered.

Oga shook her head. “Suns, yes, and awful news, too. Heard the Order’s questioning people every day out here. I don’t know how I’m going to make ends meet if they frighten all my patrons away.”

“I’m sorry,” Rey said, and she meant it: the last thing she wanted was for good people to lose their livelihoods. “If there’s anything I can do to help—”

“Stop right there!” The shout was filtered, and Rey half-turned toward the door, where two troopers in white armor were marching in. A woman sat near the door, her mug of ale frozen between her mouth and the table— a woman about Rey’s age, or a little older, with her hair tied into three knots, all down the back of her head in a line. Rey gulped. Her mouth felt dry despite her drink. “You!” The trooper grabbed the woman by the arm and jerked her out of her seat, and Rey saw that she was in the simple garb of a harvester: a dark green, loose, sleeveless over-tunic, a light blue under-tunic with baggy sleeves tied tight at the wrist, brown trousers, boots, and a string of wooden beads about her long neck. 

“What?” she asked, eyeing up the troopers with more annoyance than fear. Rey sensed a stubborn spirit, and one that would not go down without a fight. “Can’t I have a drink in peace?” She bore a passing resemblance to Rey, but not one that held up under any scrutiny or comparison: they were both lean, and both had brown hair, but there the resemblance ended. Where Rey’s nose was sharp, this woman’s was rounded and turned up at the end; where Rey’s face was round, hers was long; where the woman’s forehead was long and high, Rey’s was small. Someone unfamiliar with her face, though, might confuse them for each other.

“Call the Supreme Leader,” said one of the troopers, and the woman blanched, staring at him and then his companion as he raised his wrist. “He’ll deal with this.”

Horror filled the woman’s face. “The Supreme _Leader_? Why? What did I do?”

Rey couldn’t move: to defend the woman would be to expose herself to these troopers, and get the whole Resistance killed— but there had to be something she could do. _A mind-trick?_

The trooper spoke into his wrist comm. “Sir, this is TK-7832. We’re patrolling the cantina and we think we found the Resistance’s Jedi.”

Rey felt… cold, suddenly, as if the coolers had all opened at once in the back. She shook it off as the trooper nodded, listening to a response likely piped into his helmet, then turned the woman around, cuffing her with her hands behind her back. “Hey!” she shouted, turning her head. “I’m not a Jedi! What—”

“You’ll wait here. Don’t put up a fight, or we’ll use force,” warned the other one. 

The woman turned bright red. “But I’m not a Jedi! My name’s Kerie, I’m a harvester, I live out past the Spire in Surabat—”

“Quiet!”

Rey slipped off the stool, thankful for the hood that covered her, and stepped toward the crowd that was gathering to watch the show. Plenty of muttering was heard, and someone else shouted, “You’ve got the wrong girl!”

“Be quiet!” shouted the other trooper, brandishing his blaster. A couple of people cringed and gasped, shying away. “The Supreme Leader will decide—”

The door darkened, and Kylo Ren strode through, masked once more (had he found an old one to wear?) so broad he almost filled the door. Rey froze in her spot, unable to move as he stormed over to the terrified Kerie, who he gripped by the shoulder and yanked around to face him… only to see an unfamiliar face. Rey sensed his emotions at once: a maelstrom of mixed relief and fury, and Kerie’s emotions, too—absolute stark fear. 

“Kneel,” Kylo spat, muffled into an electric buzz through the modulator of his helmet. 

Kerie knelt instantly, her head almost on a level with Kylo’s hips. She was taller than Rey by several inches, and her head was bent. “I didn’t, I’m not— I’m not a Jedi,” she said, voice trembling. “I’m not. I told them, my name’s Kerie Ordell, I’m a lichen harvester— 

“Your hair,” said Kylo, and reached down as if he might touch the three buns, but stopped at the last second. “Why is it worn like that?”

Kerie raised her head. “I— I saw it on someone else here in the outpost. I thought it was pretty.”

_“Who_ did you see it on?” snapped Kylo. 

The harvester’s brown eyes were trained directly on the lightsaber swinging from Kylo’s belt. “I don’t know. Some little girl. Blond. It— it’s very practical. Keeps the hair out of my eyes and off my neck.”

“You’ll address him as Supreme Leader,” barked a trooper. At a gesture from Kylo, the trooper backed off, lowering his head and his weapon. 

“Do you want us to take her into custody for questioning, sir?” asked the other.

“No need. She’s being truthful.” And _that_ was a lie: Rey could sense it— because she could sense that Kerie was lying about having seen the style on a little girl, and if she could, Kylo obviously could, too. “Kerie, wasn’t it?”

“Yes,” said the woman, looking right up at him now. Both her dark eyes were blazing. _“Supreme Leader,_ ” she added, and if she could have gotten away with it, Rey was sure she would have spat at him. 

“Kerie, then. You should be more careful of how you wear your hair.” He’d sensed Rey, bright and clear and sharp in the Force, and she could almost hear him in her mind: _go out the back door. Now. Wait in the alley._ She began to inch towards the door. “We would hate to make a tragic mistake.”

“I’ll keep it in mind,” Rey heard the woman say, and then she was out the door, shutting the cold duracrete behind her in the alley, which was warm, shielded from view due to the huge petrified tree on one end of the building, and smelled of old hops and garbage. She paused to catch her breath, pulling her scarf down for a moment: the open end of the alley led around the building into a second, wider alley, and nobody would stumble back here on accident. 

Kylo. Kylo was _here_ , he’d seen her, he had his troopers— what if he changed his mind and had her taken? Why was she even waiting back here for him? Anger filled her, anger at her own stupidity: her only exits would be through the cantina or out the other alley, and he could easily stop her if he wanted. 

She turned at the sound of a footstep splashing into a puddle of oily water, and froze. Kylo was standing there, masked and hooded, just… watching her. “Rey,” he said finally.

“Why d’you have on that mask?”

“It’s a spare. I thought it would be wise. And I was right.” He advanced a step. “Why are you in town where they can find you? I didn’t think you were being serious when you said you’d be in the outpost. Are you really that naive?”

Oh, how she hated that mask: it made him sound like a vicious, emotionless droid. “How else am I going to recruit people? They need to see the Resistance’s Jedi if they’re going to believe I’m real. All the holos in the world won’t be a substitute for the real thing.”

“You’re going to be found. And when you are, I won’t have a choice but to take you into custody and _kill you_ ,” he snarled, stepping closer. 

“What happened to that lichen harvester?” she demanded, backing into the wall as he got closer.

“The woman? I let her go. I have no business with her. _You_ on the other hand...” He crowded into her space, trapping her against the wall, and Rey let him do it, narrowing her eyes at him as his broad, black-clad thigh shoved hers apart. “You’re being careless.”

“I have a job,” she said evenly. 

“You don’t need to do it. Someone else can recruit for this lost cause. Come _with_ me,” he whispered, the helmet turning his words into a burst of soft static. “Please.”

Rey had to laugh. She couldn’t help it. “No. You think because I let you _touch_ me, that I’m going to go with you? How many times are you going to ask me?”

“As many times as it takes for you to come to your senses.”

“You’ll have to keep asking, then,” she told him, inches from the mask. “Forever.”

“I’m not that patient,” he growled, and hooked his gloved fingers into her belt. “And neither are you.”

He was dizzyingly close, horribly close, and Rey’s whole body craved more despite the heat of the day, the stench of the alley, the fact that if someone _saw them_ — “I’m not,” she agreed. “I guess we’re at an impasse, then.”

“Impasse,” he scoffed, and pressed her close to the wall, his free hand curling lightly about her throat. “You’re far too trusting. I could choose to drag you back to the Order at any time. Any moment. You’d be strung up and executed for treason, and I’d do it myself.” The fingers tightened briefly, not enough to harm or frighten, and Rey gulped. 

“You want to kill me that much?” she asked. 

“Hardly. Nobody else would. I wouldn’t allow it. You deserve a death by the hand of an equal, not some third-rate sergeant in white armor with a vibro-axe.”

“Oh,” Rey squeaked, and buried her hands in his cowl to support herself as he lifted her backside with his other hand, pinning her to the hot duracrete wall of the alley, and released her throat to shove a hand down between their bodies, undoing the front clasp of her gray trousers and his own black pair. “You— _here?_ Someone’s going to see us—”

The voice was toneless and dark, modulated behind the mask. “Nobody will. Not as long as you’re quiet.” The robe almost covered him completely, but Rey felt two leather-clad fingers working into her. She lifted her thighs to grip him around the waist, and he kept her upright with the force of his knee and his other hand. “So be quiet, Jedi. Or they’ll hear you wailing from here to the Spire.”

“I really do loathe you someti— _oh,_ ” she choked, and pressed her lips together, focusing all her energy on staying silent as he roughly thrust his cock into her body, stretching her open, splitting her wide. It pinched a little, but she didn’t care. _I want to see his face,_ she thought, and reached one hand up to touch the warm curve of his helmet.

“Leave it,” he growled, pistoning his hips into her. Above them, thunder rolled, and Rey wondered distantly when the clouds had begun to blow in.

“But—”

“I said _leave it!”_ He gripped her by the wrist and pinned her hand down to the wall, his breathing coming rapid, mechanical, masked. Rey grunted, eyes squeezed shut as she tried to force herself to stay silent, but couldn’t mask the whine escaping her nose as his thrusts became more erratic, less measured. “Quiet. _Quiet._ You— you have to be—”

Kylo came apart between her thighs, shuddering out a silent release with only the barest cry behind his mask as Rey held on tight, fingers tangled in his cowl. He kept her up, knees locked, and finally disengaged from her, slipping out and leaving a hot, stinging sensation between her aching thighs. She yanked her trousers back up, ignoring the tenderness. “You could have at least let me finish,” she said, not bothering to hide her displeasure. 

“Hm,” Kylo muttered, tucking himself away and arranging his robes. “Let me come and see you. Tonight. And I’ll make it up to you.” His breathing was heavy.

_No,_ she wanted to snap. Sweat was beading on her lip from the heat of the day and prickling down her sternum. But if he came to her shelter, her place, _hers,_ then he’d be nowhere near the base, and… “You won’t tell anyone?”

“No.” 

“Fine. Eight klicks out from the Spire, northeast. Don’t wear that stupid thing.” She pointed at his helmet. 

Kylo did not respond to that. “Leave through the cantina. I’ll go out by the alley.”

“Fine.” Rey rearranged her wrap to cover her head again and tucked it over her face before turning away and leaving him there in the rank little street alone.

* * *

Rain had begun to fall, thick and heavy, by the time night drifted over Batuu and the three suns had set. Rey sat in her shelter, trying to meditate, but anticipation prickled hot in her belly, making her unable to concentrate on anything but the possibilities the night held for her. _Where was he?_ She’d lit a glowlamp already and sat on her bedroll, the soft golden light casting everything in warmth. Her boots were off, but waiting, just in case. In case of what, she didn’t know. It was warm inside, and she’d taken off her wraps, sitting alone in her tunic, shirt, and trousers. 

The curtain that covered the doorway moved aside, and there stood Kylo, dripping wet from head to toe and looking like a half-drowned Loth-cat— but he’d come without his helmet, like she’d told him. Dark hair was plastered to his forehead and cheeks in thick strands, and water poured off his robes, every step squelching. She hid a smile. “I see you got caught in the storm. Take it off. We can get it dry by the lamp.”

He grunted and eased himself into her shelter, undoing his belt and letting the sodden robes fall to the ground, then his wet boots, then the under-coat, exposing another layer, a dark shirt, the pants— how much black could one person possibly wear? Rey picked up the heavy, wet robes and hung them over the bar she used to dry her own things, brushing the dirt off the back as he stripped off his shirt and used it to mop off his soaked face and hair. His bicep… Rey found herself suddenly flustered and turned away, pretending to pick more leaf matter off his things, before peeking back at him. Thick, and pale, with that strange discolored scar by the shoulder: she’d seen him before like this, but not exactly in this light, and not so closely. “What?” he asked gruffly, and she realized she was staring again.

“Nothing,” Rey said, and averted her eyes as he draped his shirt up to dry, leaving him in his trousers and nothing else. There was another line of puckered, discolored flesh on his right arm, near the bicep, and one near his left side, by his waist, almost hidden by the trousers, and of course he still bore the scar she’d given him. She wanted to touch them all, to know the texture of his skin as intimately as she knew her own. “Sit down.”

Kylo gave her a sidelong look, but he sat: his wet pants clinging to his thick thighs as he crossed his legs. “You… saw something,” he said quietly, and Rey saw her own memory fed back through his mind: him on his back again, Rey using her hands on him like he’d done to her, ruining him, making him cry aloud. “Yes. That.” He looked away, his shoulders hunched as if he was trying to make himself small.

“What about it?” she asked, kneeling on the sleeping pad. “You said—”

“I know what I said,” Kylo bit off, testy. “I don’t—it’s not—” He shifted his weight, uncurling and curling his pale hands, and Rey probed gently at his mind, trying to see what he meant. What she came face-to-face with was a whirlwind of conflicting feelings: anger, self-loathing, curiosity overshadowed with hatred, fear, and something… something darker and more desperate that she recognized from her own mind. _Want. Desire._

_Need._

“Oh,” she whispered, a little bewildered. “You want me to—”

_“No,_ ” he almost barked, jerking his head back toward her. Defiance gleamed in his eyes, and she read the message behind them in the Force: _make me do it, make me, make me._

That, that was a game she could play at. Rey considered her options for a moment as he sat there, practically vibrating out of his skin: she could berate him, shame him— but she thought, for some reason, he might respond best to physicality. Her hand struck out and slapped him across the cheek, and he jerked, mouth open in shock. “Lie— lie down,” she demanded, for a lack of any other idea for what she should tell him to do.

Kylo shook his head sharply, once. “No.” 

She hit him again. The second blow raised a red mark on his cheek. “I said lie down.”

The delight he was trying to tamp down behind his mental barriers threatened to overflow. _“No,_ ” he said again, shivering. 

Rey lunged for him. He made no move to get away, mock-struggling and panting as she wrestled him down to the floor and pinned him there underneath her, straddling his hips. “You don’t listen, do you?” she snapped. 

“No,” he agreed, voice gone brittle as ice. “You’ll have to make me regret it.”

Rey looked up at the robes and noticed his saber was still hanging from his belt. _I could steal it and hold the blade to his throat._ A strangled whine from Kylo made her look down, and she saw that his eyes were shut tight, as if bracing himself. “No,” she said aloud, and he opened them, staring balefully into her face. “No, you don’t deserve that.”

“I don’t,” he echoed, shaking his head in agreement. “No, I don’t.”

“You also don’t deserve to take off my clothes,” she added.

Irritation pierced the haze in Kylo’s mind. “Rey—”

“I said you _don’t_. Shut up, or I’ll, I’ll—” She floundered for a moment. “I’ll put that saber of yours up where the suns don’t shine.”

Kylo let out a breathless laugh. “Oh, will you? You’d need a lot of lubricant for that.”

She slapped him again. His cheeks were beginning to stain a very bright pink. “You’ve got a lot of cheek for someone lying on the ground,” she snapped, and tugged his trousers down and off, exposing him at last: all of him, solid and pale, scarred and flushed and huge, laid out on her floor like a present. He made no move to cover himself, just lay there, his chest expanding and contracting like a huge bellows. “This time _I_ get to come, and you don’t.”

A moan escaped his mouth, and his dick twitched between his thighs, bouncing up toward her body before lying back down flat against his abdomen. “And how are you going to prevent _my_ satisfaction?” he asked, low and dark.

“You’ll find out,” she said, and threw her naked leg over, slotting herself along his cock and rubbing down. Oh, suns, but he felt good: hot and thick and solid. She didn’t even need him inside her to come: she could feel that as she rubbed herself against him. “I might— come like this. Just like this. What d’you think about th— mm—”

He reached out and took her knees, his fingers curling lightly around the backs like he expected her to swat him away, but when she didn’t, his grip tightened. “Selfish,” he grunted before a shiver wracked his body, and she felt how she was affecting him: he wanted nothing more than to overpower her and ram himself home again, but he wouldn’t do it, couldn’t do it— he got more pleasure out of her doing this than he would otherwise. Interesting: all this wanting and needing seemed to be very complex. She wriggled her hips, listening to the slick sound of her damp flesh on his, and Kylo swallowed hard, eyes shut again as a low growl escaped his throat. “Rey—”

“Ask nicely,” she panted, now on the upward climb again. “Ask n-nicely and maybe I’ll let you into me, when I, before I—”

Kylo’s breath sounded like the whoosh of an open airlock as he sucked it in between his teeth. “Oh, _Force_ , please, _please_ Rey let me, let me in—”

She was too close. “ _No,”_ she gasped, and watched his jaw ripple in real frustration as she toppled over the edge, moaning into his face and gripping the bedroll on either side of his head. “Oh, _ah,_ that w-was—” Her cunt was almost pulsing, throbbing, wanting for something that wasn’t there, and he felt it, but was powerless to do anything about it. Fury at being denied seethed through his whole being.

“I _wanted that_ —”

“I don’t care what you want,” Rey panted, still coming down. “You already got what you wanted earlier—”

He jerked up, catching her by the hair, tangling his fingers into her buns, and kissed her hard, teeth nipping into her soft mouth. She squeaked in protest, muffled behind her lips, and clawed at his back, hoping viciously she’d leave a mark somewhere. From his groans, she thought maybe she had. One of his hands reached down between them, and she thought for a moment he was going to touch her there, but realized he was touching himself, gripping his cock in his hand, giving himself long, angry strokes. 

“Stop,” she said, grabbing his wrist. Kylo made a furious noise in his throat and tried to keep going. Rey threw herself at him, knocking him onto his back on the carpet, and pinning his wrists above his head. “I said _stop_.”

He lifted his hips, seeking out friction. “I _need it_ —”

She slapped him again, and he moaned aloud, mouth slack and still as she reached down herself and took him in her hand. It looked a lot bigger in her fingers than it had in his. “I’ll do it, then. If that’s what you want.”

He looked down, seemingly aghast by the sight of her hand on him, and tilted his head back up to look at her. “Do it, then,” he ordered, his whole body wound tighter than a spring. “Do it—”

Rey began to pump her hand like he’d been doing. He grunted and shifted, brow furrowing. “Like that?” she asked, unsure of herself.

“F-faster. Not too fast. But faster.” She sped her hand’s movement, seeking out his mind, trying to see what exactly he wanted, and adjusted her grip to give _just_ the right combination of pressure and friction. Kylo’s back arched up off the bedroll, his jaw flexing tight as he brought both hands down to seize the blankets. “F-Force. _Force._ D-don’t stop, keep, keep doing th—I’m it’s—” He was so close, _moments_ away, and Rey had no intention of letting him finish.

“I thought you wanted to feel me come again,” she whispered as softly as she could, slowing her strokes, and Kylo let out a roar of fury, slamming his head back into the ground before he jerked himself out of her hand. 

“I _hate you_ ,” he snarled, tears shining wetly in his eyes as he gripped her by the elbows, dragging her up his body clumsily like he didn’t know what he wanted more: to bring himself off with his hand or to put it inside her. “ _Hate_ you, so, so m— Rey, give me your, _please_ come here—” 

“Oh, is _that_ what you wanted?” she asked sweetly, and grabbed his cock again, letting herself sink down plush and soft around him, and enjoying the look on his face as she took him to the hilt without much resistance at all. “Like this?”

_“Mmgggf—”_ was his only answer, along with an insistent tugging on her hips, and Rey began to cant her hips slowly, slowly, making Kylo keen and thrash beneath her, struggling to not thrust his hips up into her like an animal. He couldn’t even speak anymore, and a jumbled litany of desperate, tangled noise spilled from his mouth as tears spilled from his eyes, his lips trembling as she rode him all the way to her own end again, digging her nails into his chest, gripping him by the hair, using him like he was nothing more than a toy. Kylo never tried to stop her, not once, not until she arched her back and screamed out her own release to the thunder crashing overhead, light sparking down her spine. As Rey finished and began to pull off him, he wailed out some unintelligible sound and came, clumsily finding himself and jerking wildly as viscous, pale fluid splattered across his belly and thighs and fingers. 

Rey watched him as she tried to catch her breath. Kylo looked ruined, wrecked: his scarred, sunlessly pale skin was stained with his own come and littered with red marks, scratches, bruised wet places where her mouth had found him. Both eyes were closed and streaming tears, his mouth swollen and red, and his chest was heaving with ragged breaths, his hands shaking like an old man’s. It was the most satisfaction she’d felt in weeks. _I should get a rag to clean him with,_ she thought, dazed. 

“Don’t,” he croaked, one eye cracking open. 

“Water?” she asked, finding her voice a bit hoarse. She knew she had a canteen in here somewhere. 

He closed his eye again. “Mm,” was the exhausted answer.

She found it stowed in the compartment above the bedroll, and uncapped it, handing it to him. He struggled to sit up, his softening cock stuck to his thigh with the mess he’d made, but he drank anyway, his pale, thick throat bobbing. Rey reached out for the canteen and considered the contrast between her own skin and his: she’d spent all her life in the sun, and he’d spent at least half of his swathed in black, never seeing light. _Like a fungus under the earth,_ she thought. 

“Is it still raining?” he asked heavily, looking toward the curtain that covered the door. 

“Yes. You didn’t hear the thunder?” Rey tugged the curtain aside with a trick of the Force, showing him the downpour, before she let it fall back to cover them.

“No. I only heard you.” He sat up painfully, knees pulled in, and she saw the scarlet scratches she’d left on his back. Rey’s thoughts must have been loud, because he reached back and felt for one, his eye twitching. “Hm.”

“I don’t suppose you can find a reason to get the Order off Batuu,” she said dryly, looking out toward the rain. 

“Why? Do you have an aversion to my presence?” Kylo looked pale and grim as ever now, the flush fading from his cheeks. “Ah, you do. Of course you do. Why wouldn’t you?”

She huffed, annoyed. “Just get the troopers out of here. We’re not staying forever anyway. We’ll find a new base. If you— we can work something out. During a recruit transport or something. You can show up with your Star Destroyer and, and— I don’t know, fail to capture anyone and blame it on Hux or something.”

“And then?”

“And then… you do whatever you want, I guess. I don’t know.”

He sighed heavily. “But you won’t join me.”

She found a rag and threw it at him. “No. I won’t. So you can stop asking. Clean yourself up.”

Kylo wiped himself as clean as he could, then set the dirty rag aside and used some of her water to rinse off his stomach. “At least there’s one thing I know to be true and never-changing in this galaxy,” he muttered. “You’re as steadfast and stubborn as a bantha.”

“Guilty as charged,” Rey shot back. “Enjoy your Supreme Leader-ing. You can go when the rain stops.”

_What if it never—_ he thought plaintively, before shielding his mind from hers as fast as he could. They sat there, waiting, until it did, and he put on his clothes and left without another word.

* * *

They were on Batuu for another month, and Rey did her best to put an end to the furtive meetings, which got easier once she’d defended Vi from Kylo during a very risky fight that was seen by half the town: Kylo slunk back to the _Finalizer,_ and it seemed that the Force no longer connected them if they were on the same planet. She managed to get away with quite a bit, actually. Finn sneaked aboard the _Finalizer_ during a mission to get apprehended recruits off the ship and back to the planet’s surface, and Poe came back with half the new fleet, blowing half the _Finalizer_ to bits in a display visible from the Spire. She watched from below, her heart pounding as the citizens cheered: had Kylo survived that? _Could_ he have? Could anyone?

She didn’t find out for sure until the day she found that the 709th was packing up and leaving. Someone told Finn that the Supreme Leader and the General were going to a new flagship, somewhere far away in the Inner Rim. _Oh,_ she thought dismally when Finn told her, beaming, and forced herself to smile along with him. 

* * *

Kylo came to her on the final night of the occupation, when the last of the transports were streaking into the sky.

She had not been expecting him, and turned in shock to see him in only a black shirt, trousers, boots, and long over-robe as he stormed toward her in the thick forest. “Rey,” he uttered, desperation tinging his voice, and she backed up against a tree, dropping everything she was carrying and feeling horribly naked: she’d decided to forego the heavy brown tunic, so all she wore was her white shirt and gray trousers, armwraps, boots, and belt. 

“You didn’t leave already?” she asked, moments before his mouth crushed into hers: biting, nipping, licking like an animal. Rey yanked her head away, baffled. “I thought— you were going—”

“I am. I have to. I have to go.” He pulled her to him, wrestled her down to the ground in some urgency she could not understand, and pushed her to her back, crouching between her thighs like she was a treasure he was intent on hoarding. “But I had to see you first. You don’t have to stay here. You could come. With me.”

“No,” she gasped, shaking her head, and reached for him, hands slipping under his shirt— but there was to be none of that, it seemed: Kylo shook his head and pinned her wrists with the Force, tugging down her trousers with both hands as she wriggled. “You could stay, stay here— Ben, please—”

His grip tightened. “Don’t call me that,” he said in low, final tones. “ _Don’t_ ever call me that again.”

“I will,” she spat, defiant to the last as he worked his warm, bare fingers into her. Big fingers. Big hands; she’d missed those hands. “I will. One day— ah—”

“Come with me,” he whispered, pumping his hand between her thighs as he pressed his forehead to hers. “Please.”

“I can’t, I _can’t_ —” She sucked in a breath, groaning, and he made a sound of either anger or displeasure as he yanked his hand away from her and pulled himself out of his pants, lining himself up. So, he was going to use her again, and after that leave her behind like everyone else left her. Grief filled her chest. “Ben—Ren, I mean, please—”

“I _said,_ ” he growled, pushing into her body like it was a world he was trying to conquer, “don’t _call me Ben—”_ and she wailed into the crook of his neck as he bent over her, crushing her to the ground as his body moved over hers, inside hers. “You don’t _have_ to be left here like this, you could c-come with me—”

“I can’t,” she sobbed, gripping him with her hands and her knees, one hand half-tangled in his hair. It was soft, just as soft as she’d thought it would be, dark and thick and silken in its tangles. “I can’t, I can’t, I can’t—”

_Past help, she thinks I’m not worth it, not worth saving, helping, loving—_

His thoughts crashed against hers with all the frantic mania of a hundred terrified birds, and Rey shook her head, pushing back with her own thoughts: _you chose your path, you chose this, not me, not me, I tried, tried,_ **_tried—_ **

“I don’t know what to do,” he cried between his teeth, half into the crook of her neck as he took her like an animal on the forest floor. “I don’t, don’t—”

“Then go be the kriffing Supreme Leader for all I care,” she wept, kicking at his backside with her heels. “Go, go, _kill_ whatever you want, whoever you want, I don’t care, I hate you, I don’t _care_ —”

When he came, she was so inextricably entwined with his mind that she came with him. Both of them shouted out into the air of the evening: the staccato drumming of hearts beat together as one, the gasping and heaving for air as with one set of lungs. Kylo allowed himself a moment of rest before rolling off Rey, his dark hair stuck to his forehead and cheeks as he buried his eyes in the heels of his hands. Rey sat up, trembling, and drew her knees up, crossing her arms and hiding her head in them. 

Kylo spoke first. “You do care. I can sense it.” He sounded only resigned, exhausted. 

Rey closed her eyes, fighting tears. “Just go,” she snapped. “And if I see you again, by the Force or by—by anything else, I’m _not_ doing any of this again. I’ll have my saber fixed, and I’ll—if I have to kill you, I will.”

“We’ll have to block out the bond,” he said, voice as tired and old as the mountains. “It’s not easy. The effort might drain us both.”

“I’d rather be drained than— than— see you everywhere I turn,” Rey spat, and wiped her eyes. “You’ve made your choice. I don’t see the point in any of this anymore.”

“No,” he agreed, getting to his feet and pulling himself together. She stood, too, and put her trousers back where they belonged. “Can I… kiss you again?” he asked, stealing a glance at her mouth.

“You try it again, ever, and I’ll bite your lip off,” she snapped. That wasn’t a lie, and he sensed it: a step back in the bracken sounded like a rustling snake. “Go away.”

“I’ve decided on a name,” he said. “For the flagship. The new one.”

“I don’t care what you decided to name your stupid ship.”

“No?” He wiped his forehead with his hand. “Pity. I named it after you.”

She would not cry. She would _not._ “I suggest you go,” Rey said, steely and unmoving. “You have a transport to catch.”

“Yes. I do.” He drew his hood up to hide his face and parted his lips like he was about to say something, but said nothing more, turning and walking away from her until he’d disappeared through the trees.

* * *

Finn frowned next to Rose as they went over schematics and a datapad, Rey buckled into the opposite seat on the shuttle to Ajan Kloss. “Weird name, yeah. Normally they name them, like, you know— _Conquest_ or _Annihilation_ or something like that.”

“What’s that?” Rey asked, interest piqued.

“Oh,” said Rose, shrugging, “it’s just the name of the Order’s new flagship— we got some intel on it from a good source.”

“What did they call it?” Rey asked, trying not to swallow too hard.

“The _Steadfast_.”

Rey swallowed, calling up an unwelcome pair of memories. _There’s one thing I know to be true and never-changing in the galaxy—pity, I named it after you._ “Huh. Strange name.”

“Yeah. Anyway, we’ll get more information that later— when we land, we’ll have to debrief with the General, and…” Rose’s voice faded to obscurity as Rey shut her eyes and focused on blocking out all and every thought of Kylo Ren, pushing him away, away, away until he was as remote as the distant stars.

**Author's Note:**

> -all my info about batuu is directly from GE, sorry to my friends who work there and are now scarred for life  
> -yes i gave myself a cameo. what is mickey mouse gonna do? sue me?  
> -I TAKE PROMPTS AND REQUESTS ON TWITTER @neon_heartbeat


End file.
